The impact of accumulated snow pack on urban areas subject to severe winter weather results in extensive snow handling costs, for both the public and private sectors, in order to maintain safety and usability of high use facilities such as roads, parking lots and airport facilities. Traditionally, accumulated snow has been loaded and hauled to locations which allow stockpiling until seasonal melting disposes of the problem. In some areas, lacustrine or riverine disposal have been available alternatives. Over time, these options have become increasingly expensive to implement, and often reduced in availability.
Some reasons for the added cost and reduced options include:                1. Urban sites suitable in size and location for stockpiling snow from midwinter through early summer are becoming unavailable as more financially appropriate uses for the real estate emerge.        2. Haul costs have increased, particularly the cost of fuel.        3. Regulation by the Environmental Protection Agency, and others, has increased the cost of operating snow storage areas, and generally eliminated rivers and lakes from disposal options.        
Therefore, the ability to dispose of snow by melting, either at the point of collection, or at temporary satellite sites which minimize haul cost, has become an important consideration in both public and private sector snow management.
Two of the major cost factors defining the feasibility of snow melting are labor and fuel. The cost of labor and associated equipment is a function of the production rate of the process. Snow melting machinery, to be successful in the market place, should be built in a range of sizes suitable to the production requirements of the user, thereby allowing the user to project the labor cost component of use. In most cases the labor component should be comparable to the loading costs contingent with customary truck hauling.
The cost of fuel is a function of the efficiency of the snow melting equipment in utilizing the chosen energy source. Efficiency can be measured as the percentage of total consumed energy actually required to produce a specific rise in temperature of the snow mass.
Snow melting machinery presently available in the market place is inefficient from the standpoint of energy conservation for several reasons. Melting chambers open to ambient conditions, for the purpose of snow input, lose significant energy through both convection and radiation. Input of hot water, the typical melting medium, at the surface of the input snow mass, by spraying or flooding, also produces significant convective energy loss. Input of consolidated snow mass to the open melt chamber results in the consolidated mass insulating its inner core from the desired melt heat, thereby retarding the melt rate and increasing the time over which energy will be lost. The snow melting apparatus of the present disclosure seeks to overcome these deficiencies of existing systems and apparatuses.